For some unusual and unknown reason, I am attracted to reflections…..mirrors, water, cars, metal, you name it I’ll shoot it. I recently found myself in a place I didn’t particularly care to be, and then looked over and saw a pool of water. Two hours later Peter was dragging me out of the place.
All of these images were taken in the same place, same relatively small pool of water – just from different angles. I love the abstract nature of reflections, the colors, the distorted patterns. I’ve had people who’ve purchased my natural reflections ask me to tell them the subject in my source image. I think I’m going to have to start doing the Carly Simon thing, and auctioning off the secret to a select few.
Here are a few tips when photographing water reflections:
- Use a high ISO. May sound contradictory if you’re making an abstract- but I find with low ISO’s the images are too blurry.
- Use burst mode when shooting. Usually the water is moving, which creates unique reflections in rapid sequence. Burst mode will allow you to select the pattern you like best.
- Make sure you “de-noise your image before processing.
- Decide how much you are going to “clean” your image. There is usually a lot of stuff floating in water – bubbles, debris, etc. I use two of Topaz’s products – Simplify and Clean to give me a good base
- Now do something wacky. I like to play with the processing- change the colors, contrast, crop. I like Topaz’s Adjust 5 to help inspire me with creative options.
So here are my favorite pics from this week. To see a larger size, click on an image to access slide screen mode.
pamphotography 
Very nice. And interesting.